


What You Have Created

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Dark, Implied Torture, Mind Rape, Mindwiping, Non Consensual, Other, Rape, Tranquility, Unhappy Ending, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:26:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-game, Anders can't run forever.  He finds himself trapped in the nightmare that was always his worst fear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Have Created

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Non-con, abuse, torture, brainwashing, loss of personhood, Tranquility, dark fic, graphic descriptions of physical injury and violence. This is fic is one of the darkest things I’ve ever written—I wrote it to explore what I felt was one possible outcome of Anders being made Tranquil.
> 
> So yeah, it deals with that. You’ve been warned.
> 
> Title comes from a verse in the Chant of Light: "What you have created, no one can tear asunder."

It starts out like any other day.  His foot is bruised from a rock in his boot, and he resists stopping to unlace the bloody thing until he knows that soon his sole will be too sore to walk.  So he’s bent over his bootlaces and unprepared when the templars come clanking down the road.

 

It’s probably not obvious at first glance he’s a mage.  He keeps his head bent, finishes lacing up the boot, tells himself to breathe evenly despite the way his heart is suddenly pounding a thousand miles a minute in his chest, the way there is suddenly cold sweat on his hairline, between his shoulders, his breath hitching on adrenaline, uncertainty.  He has an eerie moment of déjà vu.  He’s lived this scene a thousand times already, in days before he was a criminal on the run for what he’s done, before he had the blood of innocents on his hands.

 

“Good day for a walk, serah,” one of them says.  “Are you headed to Starkhaven?” and Anders spares just a moment to curse the inaccuracy of the map he’d found.

 

“The other direction, actually,” he says, praying the evasion will work, that they will leave him alone.

 

“Dellan, he’s a robe,” one of them hisses, “look at his staff,” and Justice, already uneasy, already stirring to life inside of him, flares with a cold blast of air from the Fade.  Anders clenches his hands into fists, digs his nails into his palms to fight off that rage.

 

“I’m just a traveler who seems to have taken the wrong road,” he says, but it’s too late, he knows it.  They know it.  Did his eyes flash blue, give him away?  He’ll never know, not now.

 

"It’s him,” one of them says, with a flicker of fear, perhaps, as well as hatred, in her voice, “that madman.We’ve caught up to him, finally. It _has_ to be him.”

 




“Are you Anders, apostate of Kinloch Hold and abomination?” the templar in front says.  None of them have their helmets on, and he has grey eyes. His face is hard, shut. He might as well have kept the helmet on.

 

“Do you always ask such stupid questions?” Anders shoots back before he thinks.

 

“He killed Grand Cleric Elthina,” says the younger man at the grey-eyed one’s back.  His voice is young, too, and it strains thinner, breaks.  “He’s a murderer.”

 

Justice roars to life at that, and Anders can’t hold against him, he staggers, spares a moment for frantic thought, for frantic struggle, for—

 

“Maleficar,” the man in front snarls, and raises his hand.  Anders feels himself begin to fracture, give way, the Fade pounding in his head, cracking him open and rushing through the holes, bright and cold and pure.  Pure magic, pure power, pure vengeance.

 

“Abomination!”   It’s the last word he hears before he is Justice, and they are nothing but those who would stand in its way.

 

Anders and Justice fight together.  Anders knows the spells, the way to weave the Fade, to bend it to his will.  Justice is the force behind his blows, the mind that guides his hand.  But Anders knows they’re beaten before Justice does.  The templars drain his mana, and he fights them for every inch he gives up, until the road is a muddy maelstrom of ice, the grass by the side of it charred into ash, and they are slipping on blood, Anders’ and their own.  But he is a healer; he has always been a healer.  He only knows so many ways to hurt.  They know more, with sharp swords and the force of lyrium behind the way their power bites at his magic, shoves between him and the Fade like a blanket drawn dark and smothering around his head, and however many times he heals himself, there is always another blade, another blow, another holy shout.  He feels Justice, feels _Vengeance_ slipping away from him, he reaches out, struggles to hold to the power, but then it is gone, draining away like cold mist between his fingers.  He slams his staff into the bloody mud in front of him, pants as he struggles to channel one last spell, one last fireball, it doesn’t matter if it takes him with it—

 

Silence hits him like a physical blow, stops up his ears, dives down his throat to stop his breath.  He staggers, stumbles, falls against his staff.  Justice is _gone_ , and his knees are cut out from under him along with him.  Cold, stunning metal hits Anders in the face and he feels something crack.  He falls to one knee, gasping for breath.  He can’t, he can’t breathe, he can hardly see through the sweat in his eyes, he’s dizzy and his breath tears in his throat when he tries for it.  He’s alone.  He reaches for the knife at his belt.

 

The second blow to his head sends him sprawling.  The armored boot that comes down on his hand breaks his fingers, then he feels the bones in his hand snap, like twigs, like kindling.  The bones wrench and grind against each other, sharp and jabbing where they shouldn’t be.  He tries not to scream.  He remembers trying to reach for his mana, a helpless instinct, to heal what’s hurt.  It’s the last thing he remembers for a long time.  How long he isn’t sure.

 

He always told himself he’d fight.  That he’d make them pay for everything they took.  He never let himself think about it really happening.  He’d be dead by then, he’d told himself, reassuring, like a talisman, his mother’s pillow clutched tight to his chest on the journey away from home what feels like a different person’s lifetime ago.  They’d never let him last that long.  He’d _make_ them kill him.

 

He fights.  He makes them pay.  But they don’t kill him.  When they dump him in that cell, leave him curled broken around shattered ribs and a splintered hand, he can feel the blood pooling in his guts and hopes they won’t notice until it’s too late.  But they come later and prop up his head, pour healing potions down his throat, slick and viscous on his lips until he’s coughing and feeling the tearing agony in his belly ease.  They want him alive.

 

It’s dark, in the cell.  Cold.  Close.  He closes his eyes and sees corruption climbing the walls, smells the stench of the Blight.  There are darkspawn when he closes his eyes.  He can’t feel them but they’re there.  It feels like he’s in that pit forever.  He starts to feel fevered, hot but cold at the same time.  Justice is a constant voice in his head, a roaring in his ears, but Anders has no magic, no power left to give him.  The templars make sure of that.

 

He knows what’s coming.  They tell him.  He will be an example.  A servant in the Maker’s house, they say.  Doing the Maker’s work, harmless, obedient. 

 

Tranquil.  A symbol, of what happens to those who rebel. 

 

A mercy, they call it.  He tells them, bitter words that taste like blood and bile, that they wouldn’t know the Maker’s work if it danced the Remigold in front of them, if the Maker himself laid it out for them in words simple enough for them to understand.  That their idea of mercy is a great deal more like torture.

 

When they’re gone, he sets his mouth and swallows the tang of blood and vomit in his mouth and stares up into the darkness.  He thinks about Karl.  He’s thought about him a thousand times over the years; it’s a familiar, well-worn pain, to wonder what he must have gone through, what he must have felt, what his last thoughts were before the brand made him a different man who was no longer Anders’ lover, Anders’ friend.  The way Anders will be soon.  He thinks about Hawke, the way Hawke kissed, memories that hurt, clever lips and brazen hands and a smile that could make anyone feel like they could fly.  He wishes Hawke had killed him, imagines that hand on the knife in his back.  He would have rather had that.  Better that than this.  He thinks about Varric, and Isabela, and all the others.  Fenris would be pleased, at least, he thinks with a depth of bitterness that surprises him.  He thinks about the Warden-Commander, and the disapproval he imagines stings even now.  Thinks about Sigrun and Oghren and all the others back at Vigil’s Keep.  He thinks about Pounce, and of all the things, that’s what makes him sniff back tears, remembering the sandpaper of the cat’s tongue, the softness of his fur under his hands, the simple sweetness of having something small to touch and hold, something that butted its head under his fingers and caught at his robes with its paws, that curled up warm against his chest.

 

He thinks about Karl.

 

He has a lot of time to think.  It helps keep him from going mad, the walls pressing in around him, the darkness from seeping into him through his skin and pressing down on his heart and stopping his breath.  When he dreams it’s of corruption seeping up into him through the floor, turning his veins black.

 

Justice fumes, burns, blazes, but he feels far away, and he can’t hold Anders now.  Justice has always been cold and hard.  But Anders doesn’t want to say goodbye to him, even so.  Justice is the only thing he has left.  But every time they drain his mana, Justice gets a little quieter, until Anders is lying in the dark, and there is nothing but silence in his head.  He can still feel Justice inside him, but it’s like the spirit has nothing more to say, dull and hurt and confused.  Anders can feel his breath start to speed up as he looks up into the darkness.  It’s too quiet.  It’s too much, too dark.  There might be stories and stories, layer upon layer, of stone above his head, or maybe it’s just stone, maybe it’s sealed over, maybe they’ll forget about him down here, they’ll leave him here to die and he’ll die in the dark alone and rot away or he’ll run out of air and he’s breathing too loudly, he can hear his own breathing, he bites his lip but he can’t stop he’ll go mad down here—

 

The door rattles, and he gets his knees under him, even though he sways, lifts his head.

 

“He’s got more spirit than most of ‘em, I’ll give him that,” one of them says this time.  Their fear of him has slowly worn off, though they’re still wary.  Some act like they’re showing off just by coming in to kick him around, and that’s what this man sounds like.  He grabs Anders by his hair, drags his head back.  Anders spits in his face, and the man backhands him casually, slamming one gauntleted hand across his face, opening up old cuts that trickle blood from his lip, the swollen mess that is his nose.  Anders wheezes for air as they laugh, whimpering little noises that sound pathetic even to him escaping his lips no matter how hard he tries to choke them back.  “Maker, he’s got some fight,” the man says.  “Do you think he’d be that fiery once I’d had a go at him?”  He catches Anders’ jaw, his metal-encased fingers digging into his skin, tilts his head back.  Anders struggles, wrenches away.  The man tugs off his gauntlet, and something in Anders’ chest seizes up as he catches him again.  His thumb swipes at the blood on Anders’ lip, and he tries to bite him, but he’s too slow.  The lantern they carry makes his eyes water, but he can see the man lick the blood off his thumb and grin, raising his eyebrows speculatively at the other.

 

The other just laughs and kicks Anders in the ribs so hard he doubles over, clutching at them and heaving for breath.  “Why bother?” the other templar asks.  “Just wait a few days.  He won’t fight you afterwards.”

 

“But the fight’s half the fun,” the other man says.

 

“You’re …” Anders gasps, groans for air, “you’re in the wrong line of work, then,” he finally manages to get out.  “But you’ll have a fight on your hands once.  Once the Circles of Thedas rise up and throw off—the chains of this—”  They don’t let him finish.  The first templar wins out over the other.  He kisses Anders first, and his tongue in his mouth, his arms around him, feel like a cruel, hollow parody of the memory of Hawke, of Karl, of the embrace he’s yearned for in the dark.  They laugh at his struggles and leave him torn and bleeding and full of their come, hot and sick and shivering.  He vomits until there is nothing left in him, and then vomits again, nothing but bile and blood, but he can’t get the feeling of them out of him.  Justice howls in his head once more, and even though he feels sick, sick and vile and _wrong_ ,he treasures that feeling, treasures his anger, his rage, holds it close to him, the violation and wrongness he feels.

 

He won’t be able to feel it much longer.  He grits his teeth and holds onto his rage like it’s the most precious thing he’s ever had.  It’s all he has left.  Even Justice is gone.  There is no justice here.

 

He fights them.  He does.  He punches a templar in the face despite his chains and thinks, wildly, that Hawke would have been proud when the man reels back with a broken nose.  He’s not going to his fate meek and obedient, a walking corpse already.  He snarls at them, lines from his manifesto, curses, anything he can think of to say, anything at all.  He isn’t certain what he must look like; he knows what’s left of Justice is glowing in his eyes, until one of them grips his throat with a gauntleted hand, squeezes until there’s nothing but black and pain and gasping and Anders feels something give in the cartilage and muscles.  When he can see again, he’s strapped down, chains cold and heavy and hard around his wrists.  He tries to speak, to curse them, but his voice is a twisted, broken dying weight in his bruised throat, and he won’t meet this, his end, coughing and sputtering.  He sets his jaw and watches as they heat the brand in molten lyrium, the tang of it sharp and icy in the air around them, which is otherwise hot with the heat of the forge, keeping his eyes open wide however much he wants to squeeze them shut and look away, to deny this is happening.  They burn, tear with the effort of keeping them open, but he won’t look away, not now.

 

He can see it coming.  He thinks about Karl.

 

He thinks about Hawke.

 

This isn’t _right_ , his chest burns, aches with the injustice of it, it shudders through him like pure flame, he feels it, and Anders holds onto that as long and hard as he can, twists his hands into fists, _screams_ , wrenching, tearing it past his bruised, broken throat, with the effort of holding onto his rage as the brand is pressed to his forehead, and now he feels the tears start to come in earnest, prickling under his eyes—

 

He feels nothing at all.  He stares at the golden symbol of Andraste hanging over his head, the flame, and wonders why it wavers so in his vision until he realizes his eyes are wet with tears.  He blinks, and a few slip free, trickle down the sides of his face into his hair.  He doesn’t feel … well.  It means, he realizes, nothing.  He doesn’t feel well because he fought.  If he’d just come to it willingly, they wouldn’t have hurt him.  What had been the point of fighting?

 

The others congratulate each other, unlock his chains, and even though he knows perfectly well who they are, what they’ve just done, he does nothing but sit up and rest his hands in his lap.  He hurts terribly, but it’s only pain, only his body.  It doesn’t matter.  He stares down at his hands.  His breath shudders, whimpering in his throat, like a dying thing.  He wonders why.  They laugh at him, and he feels a vague, dazed befuddlement, and wonders why again, because he thinks he should know, thinks he should be …

 

But there is an emptiness, a nothingness where that _should be_ leads.  He remembers something like an aching, twisting hurting knot of bitterness and rage, fear and pain, being there.

 

It is gone now.  There is nothing in its place.  Nothing but a strange, dull sense of peace.  One of the templars comes and takes his arm, drags him to his feet.  He follows obediently.  He sees no reason to resist.

 

They lead him out of the dungeons, and for a moment he has no idea where he is.  Everything that is not the dank darkness of his cell is unfamiliar, somehow, and his own memories seem far away, distant.  He staggers at the light that comes in through high windows, shies away, tears welling up beneath his eyelashes at the unfamiliar brightness, the pure physical shock of it.  They curse him and drag him behind them.  They take him into a room and tell him to bathe, and when he isn’t fast enough about undressing, rough hands yank off his shirt and trousers and propel him forward into the water then begin to scrub him down.  One hand pats him roughly as they clean between his legs. 

 

He manages to say, finally, “I can wash myself.”

 

One of them looks at him as if startled, discomfited by the flat monotone of his voice.  He wonders why, why the man flushes and averts his eyes as one of the others slaps the rag into his hand and tells him to get to it.

 

One of his hands is still useless and broken, but he does nonetheless, kneeling in the water to wash himself as thoroughly as he can.  They stay, taking up watchful positions at the door, armor clanking, watching as he slowly manages to wash off everything that has clung to him from the time in the cells.  He ignores their eyes on him.  They mean nothing to him, after all.

 

Finally he climbs out of the bath and one of them gives him new clothes.  He dresses in them without looking at them, smalls first, then clothes, and follows willingly when they say they’re taking him to the Mother.

 

What follows is a jumble of arguments that might have infuriated him, once, he knows it like an echo in the back of his mind and heart, but now he feels nothing, just stands silent as he is talked over and argued about.  He now knows how to control himself, as they say, and stands still and quiet, his hands folded in front of him despite the broken fingers of the one, curled awkwardly against his palm, his head bowed.  Finally the cleric in question breaks through the babble and approaches him, pushing his damp hair back off his forehead with one hand so that the brand is more clearly visible.

 

“What do you say?” she demands.  Her face is hard and sharp.  “What do you want, Tranquil?”

 

“I only wish to be useful,” he answers easily, without feeling or difficulty.  “I will serve however you desire it.”

 

She smiles, at that, and he wonders if what he said was pleasing, somehow, for there is no joy in that look, but there is something, the bright, cold fire of retribution, of … vengeance.  “Good,” she says.  “And serve you will.  You will be a fine example of submission to the Maker’s will and how it brings … peace.”

 

He nods, though he does not see how.  It simply makes sense to serve how he can, does it not?

 

His new duties are difficult for him.  He thinks they must try to make them so, and wonders why, but they tell him this is what he deserves, for what he did, for the things he did, so it must be true.  He is constantly cleaning, on his knees, scrubbing, polishing, fetching things, doing laundry until his hands bleed, and he knows how to do none of these things well.  He is clumsy, and they mock him, and it does not hurt, exactly, but it bewilders him.  He asks why they have him do these things he does not know how to do, offers his abilities in healing.  He knows how to make so many potions, he tells them, not eager to please, but something very like it but for the lack of feeling behind it.  But they tell him that he isn’t supposed to do what he’s good at, that this is a punishment.  It is the only answer he receives, so he accepts that it must be true.

 

And there are other things, duties that seem to be unofficial.  No one ever mentions them, anyway.  The press of a cockhead against his lips, warm spend running down between his thighs after they finish with him.  Men, and women, too, sometimes, use him, tug him into storerooms and shove him down over barrels, direct him to his knees in the back rooms the where the parishioners never go.  He remembers ducking into storerooms with Karl back in Ferelden, laughing and covering his mouth with one hand to muffle it, without a pang.  He does not know why these people want him now, why they do this to him.  He is not particularly desirable, he thinks, when he looks at some of the others he sees in the Chantry.  He’s thin and scarred, with a nose that’s been broken and fingers that never healed properly, all bony angles with no flesh to soften them at all.  Maybe it is just that he is available.  That must be the reason, because he can’t think of any others, though some echo like whispers in the back of his mind that he can’t grasp.  Well, if he is available, it makes sense that he should be used.  That is what he is for, after all.  That is why they say he is still alive.  So he lets them, spreads his legs and opens his mouth, lets them pull his hair and slap his ass, after, too, though he doesn’t understand why they do it.  At least he is good at this.  He is not grateful for that, he isn’t grateful for anything, but it is good to do something, at least, that he knows how to do properly.

 

There is something tickling at the back of his mind for weeks, though—it starts after the first time three templars order him to his knees, then his back, for them in the room where they keep the unused altarpieces.  That tickling starts keeping him awake in his narrow pallet through the dreamless nights, staring into the darkness out his window in bewilderment, straining to recognize it, for it feels so familiar.  The darkness, the closeness, of the room they gave him makes something shudder under his skin, crawl in his nerves and knot up in his belly with freezing chills, and he doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what it is, just that when he keeps his eyes on the stars out of the window, it eases, and that makes it easier to fall into dark, dreamless sleep.  But he doesn’t know what it is, there in the back of his mind.  It slips away when he reaches for it.

 

He’s polishing the statue of Andraste one morning, trying hard to get out a recalcitrant smudge, when he realizes that there are people looking at him.

 

It’s not that he doesn’t like it when people look at him.  He doesn’t feel anything differently.  But people usually mean more work, and he hasn’t finished this task yet.  But he turns around to face them, because that is what he should do.  He was told to look at people when they speak to him after the first few days, when his eyes kept naturally returning to his feet and the floor just before them.  He nods at them.  He doesn’t know who they are.

 

“Maker,” one of them whispers.  “I hate their dead eyes.”

 

It makes his cheeks burn, and he doesn’t know why.  He averts his gaze and goes back to scrubbing the statue when they don’t give him any further tasks to do, but he feels their gaze on him for long moments after, and he fumbles in his work.  They’re talking about him.  About how _that’s_ the mage who destroyed the Kirkwall Chantry?  But look at him now.  It’s almost—such a waste of a—no, it isn’t, what are you saying; don’t know you know what he did?  It’s justice, one man says in a loud voice that makes him wince. 

 

That makes something stir inside him, that tickle itch and ache at the back of his head, and he drops the rag, has to bend to pick it up.  His hands are shaking when he does, and he stares at them in helpless confusion.  When the Sister in charge of him comes to check on his work, she is impatient, tells him he is useless, slaps the rag back into his hand and slams it against the statue so that it begins to throb with a dull bruising pain before she leaves.  The sisters are always angry with him.  He feels as if he should understand why, but he doesn’t.

 

It’s after she’s gone that the feeling, that itch, that _ache_ , starts to build.  It’s strange, cold and pure.  It _hurts_ , burning, tearing him open, but it feels clean, raw, in a way he hasn’t felt—felt since—since—

 

 _Vengeance._   Fury, hatred, _vengeance will be mine and they will burn like the pyres they prefer, I will rend their flesh from their bones, I will have them, all, they have hurt us, the_ things _they have done_ —

 

It’s like something is tearing open, tearing free, inside of him, and Anders gasps with it, abruptly breathless.

 

He looks down at his hands, holding a cleaning rag.  Something trickles up within him to fill those places that were so empty, something sick and broken and wrong and violated, something grieving and hollow and terrible.  He stares down at his hands, worked raw and blistered, the skin cracked and broken in a dozen places, feels the soreness in his jaw from stretching it open for a templar’s cock.  He shocks himself with the unfamiliarity of it, the rawness and pain in his throat, the _release_ of it, when warm, wet tears trickle down his cheeks and fall on his hands, stinging and burning with bitter salt against his open blisters and cracked flesh.  For long moments he just stands there and weeps, and the sound is hoarse and ugly and sounds like _himself_ for once.

 

He’s violated and broken and _wrong_ , and all of it hurts; he cries out his helpless, wretched grief over the ruin they’ve made of him into his hands, sinks down beside the statue out of helpless, long ago instinct, the automatic urge to make himself small, hunching in on himself and burying his face in his hands and knees as he presses himself into the corner by the statue that’s always shrouded in shadow, where the light of the candles don’t reach.  He is shivering; he feels sick, fevered, and still the tears burn hot against his blistered hands as he shakes and sobs.  He can’t seem to stop, can’t seem to keep them back.

 

Vengeance’s fury blazes up in him, hard and cold.  He sets his teeth, clenches his fists as Vengeance’s anger propels him to his feet.  Magic burns around them, shimmers up over his wrists, bright and real for the first time in weeks.  How long has it been?  Endless grey days.  A lifetime.  An eternity.

 

A long time ago, longer than that eternity, he’d though that Tranquility might be like being in solitary.  It had been while he’d been in the cell in Kinloch Hold, and it was quiet all around him, so quiet he couldn’t breathe.

 

It wasn’t like that at all.  He hadn’t been able to understand it then.  Now he does.  Now he understands emptiness.  Loss.

 

Silence.

 

He won’t go back there.  Not again.

 

Not ever again.

 

He can’t simply let them get away with this, _accept_ what they’ve done to him, to _them_.

 

Anders makes it five steps into the center of the Chantry, raises his hands and fire streams out of them, crackles hot in the air, catches the banners that show the holy flame and they burn and blacken.  Justice is cold and bright in him for long moments, and he rides on that anger, for it covers the pain, the awful holes that have been ripped in him that can’t be mended, can’t be healed, can never be healed, no matter what magic he uses or spirits he calls.  He hopes the fire catches, spreads, sweeps him up with it until there is nothing but flame, destruction, nothing but justice, nothing but conflagration.

 

Nothing at all, no Chantry, no statue, nothing at all.  Maybe then they can be free.

 

He feels the clarity fading and he fights for it, fights for it with everything he has, casts spell after spell, turning the sanctuary around him into an inferno—

 

But when the sisters come running out, they find him standing there watching the flames burn dully, tears still drying on his cheeks.  He admits to having started the fire when they ask.  He cannot tell them why.  He does not understand his own actions, he says.  They look at him with fear, wariness, confusion, and he asks them why.  He is harmless, they know that.  They made him that way.

 

They lock him in a dark room with no window after that.  He lets them.  He knows he has done something that deserves punishment.  He doesn’t understand why he did it.  He doesn’t understand why he did any of it, just that he did.  He remembers Hawke, remembers Karl, but they are just names and a collection of pictures, even the laughing way Hawke kissed him, a warm hand on his thigh, or the soft brush of Karl’s beard.  Solona Amell’s curls.  He thought they had made him smile, once, twining them around his fingers.  He remembers Varric, grins and stories, teasing him about an earring.  He reaches up, fingers the empty hole in his ear, and feels nothing.  Why had he gotten it?  He remembers a hundred names and faces and jokes and smiles.  He remembers a cat with an impractical name.  He remembers them all, but he feels nothing.  Not even the ache of loss.

 

He doesn’t remember how to smile, or why you would.  He remembers smiling, and laughing, and crying, but he doesn’t remember why.

 

He wakes himself with his breath shuddering in his throat and tears wet on his face, and doesn’t remember why even now, doesn’t know why, even as he shivers, curls his knees up to his chest and clings to them.  He is at peace, he can’t be afraid of dark, enclosed spaces.  He feels no fear.

 

But he can’t stop shaking.  He’s lost something again.  He found something he’d lost and now he’s lost it again.  He feels horribly empty, but there is nothing he lacks.

 

Everything is fine.  He is at peace.

 

But part of him already knows, part of him argues.

 

 _There can be no peace_ , that part of him says.


End file.
